WASHINGTON: Leaving children in parked cars in the blazing heat of summer: it’s so obviously wrong, yet it happens with astonishing regularity, with tragic results.
From 1998 through 2013 in the United States, officials say, an average of 38 children a year have died of heat stroke in cars — the overwhelming majority of them under the age of five.
And so far this year, the toll stands at 17, prompting a national campaign urging parents and caregivers never to leave kids alone in parked cars. “Every summer it seems that we live out the same nightmare,” said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, a father of two, at Thursday’s launch of the “Where’s Baby? Look Before You Lock” drive.
To make the point, thermometers fitted to a dark green Chevrolet Cruze sedan at the launch in Washington showed 78.3 degrees (25.7 Celsius) outside, but 96.1 degrees (35.6 Celsius) inside — and that, on an overcast day.
Twenty-nine percent of children who die of heat stroke in cars got into the vehicle by themselves — but in another 52 percent of cases, they were simply left behind by forgetful adults, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said.
Young children are particularly vulnerable because their body temperature can rise three to five times faster than an adult’s, said pediatrician Leticia Manning Ryan of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland. “When a child’s internal temperature gets to 104 degrees (40 Celsius), major organs start to shut down — and when that child’s temperature reaches 107 (41.7 Celsius), the child can die,” she said.
More often than not, children are forgotten in cars because stressed-out parents and caregivers suffer memory lapses, Foxx said. “Based on the data we have, often, it’s being fatigued and overwhelmed that leads to these kinds of tragedies,” he said.
Tragic tales of children — many of them buckled into special child seats that are mandatory on US roads — are a regular summer fixture of US news coverage.
AFP
